


Loops And Coils

by rufeepeach



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 14:22:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1188453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufeepeach/pseuds/rufeepeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumpelstiltskin has a little bit of a fixation with Belle's hair; Belle can't understand, but is more than happy to enjoy it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loops And Coils

**Author's Note:**

> Wow I haven't written any real Rumbelle in ages! So this is for anyone who has been wishing I'd get off my ass and actually write my OTP again :D
> 
> Also, points to anyone who can spot the various references to my favourite things in this!

Rumpelstiltskin is many things, and few of them pleasant. Of this he is well aware.

He is a liar, a trickster, a thief and a villain. He is a demon and a magician, an alchemist and an imp. That he was a man once hardly matters now: the cracked, leafy gold skin and scales should more than speak for themselves.

But he has manlike traits, as monsters often do, and one is that he knows what he wants, what he likes, what he – to put it poetically, but perhaps still aptly – desires.

It isn’t need: that he knows. It hasn’t been need in a long, long time. Need is the realm of men, of mortals with hot blood and rabbit hearts. One as ancient as Rumpelstiltskin can distil need down to a fine art, until it is one driving urge, and everything else, light and warmth, food and company, wine and magic, are mere wishes and whims and wants. 

What he needs is years and worlds away yet, and has no place here in a sunlit hall, with his pretty maid cleaning the drapes and the sunlight gleaming on a golden fleece. No, Rumpelstiltskin has been trapped in the realm of want for quite some time now, and isn’t it ironic, that when such a thing should reappear it should come wrapped in golden silk, the same shade as the coils and threads he spins that have so become his signature?

His thoughts whirl from the philosophical to the obscene and back again, and Belle knows none of it. The gold was swapped for periwinkle blue quite some time ago, but it is not the fabric he watches now, no matter how becomingly it swishes about her ankles, or lies softly over her slim waist. Her back is to him, the delights Rumpelstiltskin has always enjoyed in beautiful women hidden, and so Rumpelstiltskin’s theme for today appears to be her hair.

He has long since given up on not staring at his maid in any way he finds her. She is beautiful, of course: he would not have dealt for an ugly daughter, who would be a chore to come upon in the castle and have had little real value to her father and countrymen. She is aesthetically pleasing, but it is more than that, this feeling, this urge to watch and to see all that he can of her, every mood, every smile, every movement and sway of her lithe little body. This is more like desire, again, and as it rears its ugly head, with its implications of heated blood and of trust and of wrapping his web anew, to fit and protect someone else… desire has turned Rumpelstiltskin to stone twice before now. He will not make the mistake again.

He promised himself this thirteen times before breakfast. Now it is early afternoon, and the mantra wears a little thin.

Her hair glows chestnut and mahogany lustre in the golden light, and it falls in long, looping curls down her slender back. Rumpelstiltskin could like as not weave something just as silky, just as soft at his wheel, but it wouldn’t have her warmth running through it, and he’d never capture the little rivulets of copper and of something that is just a little warmer than ebony that runs through Belle’s hair. It sways, a tantalising river, down her back. He watches with itchy fingers, desperate to comb through it, to feel its warmth.

He keeps his hands to himself. No need to frighten the smiling little thing, when admiring from a distance will suffice.

\---

Belle has never understood ladies’ fashion.

Of course, she can follow a style, the trend for higher necklines or longer sleeves, now for a larger necklace or hanging pendant earrings. She can even enjoy the odd game of predicting what will be next, and of adapting what is current to become flattering to her less than traditional body. She’s not got the tall willowy slenderness, or the curvaceous ripeness, that typify a beautiful lady at court. She is smaller than she should be, with slim hips and a modest bust, and shoulders she’s always felt are just a little too broad.

She’s always taken that – as she has tried to with any difficulty – as a challenge, and it is one she believes herself to have conquered a dozen times over. Belle can look the part of a lady as well as any noblewoman in nine kingdoms: she simply has never understood why ladies must look how they do.

The hemlines, for one thing, were absurdly difficult to navigate now that she was a maid. Dancing had been hard enough, but the new challenge of sweeping, of clambering, of rushing hither and thither with swathes of gold silk between her ankles was more than her meagre balance could take. She finally swapped out the uncomfortable silks for simple and shorter blue wool, and is thankful for it.

The necklines, too, plunging and revealing of the whole of one’s collarbone, Belle has never enjoyed. She has no particular view one way or the other on the proper concealment – or revealing – of a woman’s cleavage: it is warmth for which Belle is concerned. The Dark Castle is draughty, as Rumpelstiltskin has warned her once or twice, and the sensation of a cold wind running down her sternum is not a pleasant one.

So a blouse, comfortable cotton, lies between her dress and her skin, and for the first time since the war started – since she became an icon, a treasure, a symbol of hope in her finest clothes – she is truly comfortable.

Her only issue now, of course, is her hair.

It’s becoming unmanageable: the castle’s water pump is icy in winter, and without the creams and lotions that her maids had always applied to it, Belle’s hair is fast becoming a nuisance. It had taken an hour every three days for her maids to wash her hair, and two once they were put to work on the war effort and Belle had been left with just the one helper and her own two hands. Now, with nothing but the little bottle of rinse and a water pump, it has become a true inconvenience.

That, of course, all went without mentioning the time and effort it then took to brush, and then to secure back from her face. It soon began to fall into everything, into water buckets and dusty piles of rags, and obscure her vision when she scrubbed or polished or tried to cook.

So Belle has been making do for months with simple braids and rags to tie it back, but her arms grow sore even from that effort every morning, and she thinks longingly of scissors, of hair that would fall only to her shoulders, and peace from this work.

Of course, short hair for women – especially those noble born - is hardly the done thing. But if Rumpelstiltskin is the only man who will ever see her, from this day until death, and if Belle would not miss her hair… what would be the harm in cutting it short, and ending one more daily worry?

It takes her weeks, from the formation of the idea, to the research in the myriad books and art works Rumpelstiltskin keeps in his library – fashion plates from other kingdoms, perhaps even other worlds, have women with the hairstyles of men, even shorter than Belle would so much as consider – to the moment when she sits before the mirror in the smaller study, scissors in hand, book before her, ready to try.

“What are you doing?” she is startled by the sudden voice in the silence, and the scissors slip in her hands. She has to admit that she had been stalling a little, tarrying longer than necessary before the first cut. Once she cuts it, that’ll be that, she thinks. One slice through the ponytail she has gathered at the nape of her neck, and she will have to keep going to keep it even.

At home, peasant women and prostitutes had short hair. But Belle is not at home, not anymore, and she is lower than a peasant woman: she is all but a slave.

Who is to care now for the length of her hair?

“Oh, Rumpelstiltskin,” she breathes, one hand to her chest, “You startled me!”

“I won’t ask twice, dearie,” he says, words clipped and short. Angry. What has she done this time to offend him?

His temper is harder to provoke, now, than it had been in her earliest days in the castle. He hardly ever snaps at her, or barks his commands. He is not as hard, sharp and harsh as he wishes he was, she knows. He wants desperately to be such an ogre, such a monster. In truth, she thinks he spends more time trying not to be offensive to her, as if her good opinion were more important than her obedience.

It is an odd trait to find in a creature so renowned as a demon, a dark sorcerer, but a pleasant surprise all the same. Now, however, his whole manner, reflected in the mirror, is defensive and cold, irritable and bitter.

“I thought to cut my hair,” she says, bewildered by his folded arms and tapping boot, his cold sneer. What in the name of the Gods has she done wrong?

“Oh, you did, did you?” he mutters, half to himself, half to her. She nods, slowly. It is hardly a crime, to change her hairstyle: he has not caught her with her scissors poised at his golden fleece or the corner of a priceless painting, after all. “And from where, pray tell, did this urge come?”

“I… it’s a mess,” she says, because she had thought it should be obvious, the inconveniences of fashion, to a man who spends so long in tight leather breeches, elaborately laced tall boots and high collars. Perhaps not. Perhaps she had been wrong, and it is her appearance, her long hair and her well-bred beauty, her jewels and ball gowns, the clear signs of her high birth and her father’s wealth, that he treasures. “I spend all morning brushing it, cleaning it, keeping it off my face. It’s becoming a nuisance. And if I leave it…” she shudders for effect, “it’s either a chore or an eyesore.”

He nods, tightly. “And so you wish to… remove the problem?” he asks, tentatively. She nods again, confusion plain on her face in the mirror. 

“Yes. Yes, is… is that a problem?”

He looks all of a sudden tormented, but he says not a word, and gives no sign of a decision either way. He’s hiding something, something under his skin, yet another something he will not show her, nor allow to be cleansed and set free in the light of day. There is a riot of such somethings, dark and difficult and torturous, whirling under his skin: she wonders, in her more poetic moments, if they are what turn his skin its peculiar colour and texture. 

Finally, he grits his teeth – the muscle in his firm jaw tightens, slightly, she can see it happen – and shakes his head. “Why should it be?” he trills, all of a sudden light and manic, but there’s such a tense, brittle edge beneath it that she cannot even pretend to accept the pretence. He’s upset; she has upset him. But how? By wishing to cut her hair? What would he care for that?

“You tell me,” she challenges, annoyed at last by how hard he is watching her, as if he expects her to stab him with those scissors at any moment.

They stare each other down in the mirror, second by long second, as his hands clench and unclench at his sides, and she holds the scissors threateningly to the hair in her hand. 

Belle feels she is holding her breath; his eyes burn into hers.

Then he takes a slow, deliberate step forward, and then another, faster, until his front is to her back and just to one side, her head level with his waist. His fingers gently wrap around her wrist, and ease the scissors away from her hair, guiding her hand down to place them on the table. She keeps hold of them even as he pulls his own hand away, and she shivers when he doesn’t step back, waiting to see what he will do next.

Rumpelstiltskin surprises her again: he does not walk away, nor reach for her, nor say a word at all. He simply reaches out a shuddering hand, and places it on the back of her head. The warmth burns through the curtain of her dark hair to her skull, and she breathes in through her mouth, sharp and silent, trying to ignore her thrumming pulse, her hammering heart. He is so close his heat brands her through her back, and she shivers all over, hoping he doesn’t notice.

She has dreamed of having him so close: the reality is frightening in its intensity, and she wants desperately to lean back to him, to have him touch her everywhere, his warmth setting her skin on fire.

Slowly, so slowly, Rumpelstiltskin runs his warm hand down the back of Belle’s hair, her neck, over the arch of her shoulders and the curve of her back, to where the ends lie beneath her shoulder blades. She trembles, as he does, not afraid but something worse, something warmer and deeper and too intense to look at, to feel completely or to look in the eye.

His eyes no longer meet hers in the mirror; instead they follow his hand, deliberate and so strangely tender, deep in thought as a man absorbed in his favourite book, or lost in a work of art. Belle watches his expression as it slackens, as the tension drains and leaves only that still and silent contemplation, as if all the wonders of the universe were contained within her unbound hair.

He slips his palm beneath the curtain of her hair, to rest on her back. She swallows, hard, and watches him as he watches his own hand, sliding up beneath, the backs of his fingers running lightly against the warm underside.

For some reason, it makes Belle shake to see him so absorbed, and his calm attention – as rapt as ever it has been as he spins at his wheel – almost moves her to tears. He is always in motion, dancing or spinning or waving his hands in an intricate gesture, that to see him so still – still, she thinks, to the depths of his soul – is a blessing and a tragedy.

For a moment, his hand is on the back of her neck, skin to skin, heat to heat, and she leans back just a little, granting him everything, every nerve ending and blood vessel focussed on that one point of contact. 

Her eyes slip closed. She wonders if he’ll lean down those last precious inches, and kiss her forehead, her temples, the side of her neck.

At last, she looks back at the mirror, her eyes drifting open to see the tableau they make: green-gold mottled skin on pale pink, his head right by hers, looming over her, her hair flowing down her back between them. She can’t decide if they look like a domineering master and his servant, or a pair of lovers, or both, or neither. She doesn’t know which is preferable; she wishes for a chance to find out. Her mouth dries up, and she swallows convulsively; the movement seems to echo through Rumpelstiltskin’s fingers on her throat.

His eyes tear away from his contemplation of her, to meet hers in the mirror once more. Bewildered, shaken blue meets regretful opalescent green, and he finally steps back; she thinks, strangely, that it cost him the wealth of lifetimes to do so. His hand slips from beneath the warm, heavy weight of her hair, and wavers in the air, as if he’d like to reach forward once more. She wishes that he would. 

Except he couldn’t, of course, because Belle is about to cut all her hair off, a practical decision in a situation that suddenly has nothing of practicality to it. It is as if all of her surety, all of her confidence in that plan, has wilted away. She looks away from his intense gaze, down at her lap, suddenly ashamed. She cannot say why.

“There,” he murmurs; his voice is strained, low and hoarse, as like a normal man’s as ever she has heard it. “My ration for eternity. Wars have been fought for less, I’d vouch. You may… proceed.”

Belle cannot meet his eyes again, so her gaze is still on her lap when his voice fades into silence. When she looks up, he has vanished from the room.

She doesn’t know why she feels like crying, but she collapses as if her strings have suddenly been cut, and lies for long minutes with her head on her arms, her shoulders trembling but no sound coming out.

The scissors stay where they are. She never thinks of using them again.

\---

Rumpelstiltskin can barely see for anger.

That’s a good thing, he reasons, in the cold, angry detached part of his mind that can reason right now: it means he can’t take in the real horror of what is before him.

Who is before him.

Belle has been locked up for the Gods know how long, and everything about her is just a little bit wrong, now, off-kilter and broken down. Her glorious dark hair is matted and tangled and her skin is too pale, and if he finds a single bruise, he promises, then someone will die, promise or no. She clings to his hand as they walk back into town, and her fingers are shaky and cold, the skin stretched over her bones. She’s not emaciated – Regina’s had her fed, at least – but she’s not healthy either.

Her eyes are a little sunken, her lips chapped, and when he takes both her hands in his, kisses her sweeter, this time, softer on the lips, because it’s been so very long and he can no longer contain himself, there’re ugly red welts around her wrists. They’re healed some, now, but they’ll scar if he doesn’t use magic. She was in manacles at some point.

Belle was clapped in irons and locked away. Regina will die for that alone.

But Rumpelstiltskin can barely see for rage, so he assumes he’s missing things. Maybe she’s even thinner under her clothes, maybe there’re bruises, scars he can’t see. Maybe he still can’t pay enough attention, because he’s too busy being angry at Regina, angry at Emma for being too slow, and most of all at himself, for not thinking even to look for her.

How long did she languish, waiting for him, and he didn’t even try to find her grave?

She’s still beautiful. She could never be anything less than that. Her smile is still pure sunshine, her eyes bright and now openly fixed on him, filled with undeserved adoration that she must have had before, but that he never dared acknowledge until now. She’s watching his every move and clinging to his hand as if he will vanish at any moment, as if she will wake up and find him gone.

He doesn’t need to tell her, he thinks, that the same is true for him. He’s had this dream too often, the ghost of her laughter or her skirts around a corner, the dream of her soft red lips and the shining waves of her hair held close in his sleep. The firmness of his hand in hers tells her everything she needs to know.

She leaves him to change – he knows not how much modesty she’s been afforded recently, and so he doesn’t begrudge her a curtain now – and emerges in a grey dress that seems to have been tailor-made for her slim frame. Perhaps it was: Mr Gold had never wondered where the clothing had come from, and Rumpelstiltskin had had more important things on his mind. Another of Regina’s little jokes. He’s going to break her neck.

Her hair is still in a mess, where he remembers it so clearly in smooth, glossy chestnut glory, pinned back loosely, streaming down her back. She won’t let him fix her bruises and scars with magic – not yet, anyway – but he has a hairbrush, and some time before the town will put Regina where he can easily get to her. No need to go hunting, when he’s certain there’s a mob set to do his work for him.

She notices him looking, and a pale hand comes to tug at one matted lock with a grimace, “Regret leaving it long, now,” she says. He shakes his head.

“It’ll only take some patience and a good brush,” he says, gently. “Come, sweetheart, sit down.” He gestures to his little work chair, and she nods, gratefully, coming to sit in front of him.

He places his hands comfortingly on her shoulders, and she looks up at him. “This is a little familiar, isn’t it?”

He gives her a soft smile, acknowledging the memory, “Yes, a little.”

Except, then, she wasn’t battered and bruised, and he wasn’t murderous, and he hadn’t thought – even for a moment – that she could love him, or that she would come back for him if given the chance to leave him in the dust. She was younger and whole and a lifetime of pain, of loss and longing and grief, hadn’t passed.

He conjures the hairbrush that had once been hers from thin air, summoning it with barely a thought from the cabinet in his front room, where it has been kept safe for thirty years or more. He presses it gently to the top of her head, and starts to work.

He’s gentle as he can be, patient, but it’s still long work, and he has to lean on her shoulder for balance. Her hair is a mess, but if he can’t put her back together so easily, heal the last decades of neglect, of abuse, of being trapped and alone simply for being loved by him, then he can give her this. He can at least fix her hair, make her look like herself again truly, and for now, until he can do the rest, this has to be enough.

“I love your hair,” he murmurs, after a long time has passed. She nods, and he can see her gritting her teeth, swallowing down tears. She gulps, hard. He doesn’t press questions: the source of her misery is obvious, and it makes him sick.

“I know,” she says, after a long moment, when she is back in control of herself. “I’m… I’m sorry.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” he murmurs, and presses a kiss to the top of her head. He rests his face there, breathing her in, the scent of home and love and Belle even through hospital disinfectant and dust. He has missed her so much he could fall to his knees and weep for it. “This is nothing. None of this is your fault. I love you, Belle. We’ll make it right.”

“We’ll be together,” she agrees, softly, tremblingly. Her hand comes to grip his on her shoulder, clinging on for dear life.

“Yes, we will,” he agrees, fervently.

He works out the rest of the knots in her hair without another word, and when he’s done he runs his fingers through the waves, and indulges in how soft it is, how silky, clean and warm once more. At least something about Belle is right again, now.

\---

They have eternity, now: Belle knows that.

Henry is safe, the town is celebrating, and she finally has Rumpelstiltskin back to herself. It is almost obscene how quickly they half-run back home, to his home, the house she has occupied since he left. He looks around at how she has cluttered the space; her bag here and shoes there, coats on the hangers, teacups on the coffee table. He’ll comment later, she thinks, when his mouth isn’t too busy kissing hers.

They have forever, but she still can’t keep her hands off him. He’s all wrapped in black leather, like he was when they first met, and while she has missed the man she came to know in Storybrooke, Belle can’t be too sorry about the return of the leathers, just for now.

“I love you,” she breathes between kisses. The rest of the night is a blur of shed clothing and hot hands on skin, and the pleasure of his mouth and his touch warring with the joy of simply being together again, of holding him within her and wrapping his arms around her, and feeling him warm and solid and whole again, back from his quest, back in her arms.

It is only hours, when they are at last worn out and dozing together, slipping into sated sleep with his arm around her waist and her back flush to his chest, that she feels him bring his free hand up between them. He coils a long loop of her long, smooth hair around his hand, and holds it close, just tight enough that she can feel it, not enough to cause any discomfort.

“ _I am looped in the loops of her hair_ ,” he murmurs, almost to himself. Belle giggles softly, the line familiar. She has spent many hours lost among the books of this world, after all, both before and during his sojourn in another world.

“ _O love is the crooked thing_ ,” she recites back, with a smile, “ _there is nobody wise enough, to find out all that is in it_.”

“You’ve been reading,” he mutters, half a laugh, against her neck.

“Of course,” she grins, snuggling closer into his embrace. He does not let go of her hair. “You did give me a library as a courting gift, after all.”

“That I did,” he laughs, and presses a kiss to her throat. He drifts into sleep soon after, but Belle lies awake a little longer, the feeling of his arm around her middle and his hand in her hair secure and sweet and utterly wonderful.

Maybe, she thinks, if he just keeps hold of her hair, keeps her bound to him and safe in their bed, they can finally be at peace, safe and happy together. 

They have eternity. That will have to do for now.


End file.
